Note by Note
by aloxi
Summary: There was something to be said, André mused, for crimes of passion. / / In which Jade cannot play the piano, ever, at all, and attempts to be kind to her boyfriend. Ish. Jade/André friendship, Jade/Beck.


**a/n: **A shorter version of this was my entry for the All I Want For Christmas (Is You) challenge over at LJ's Victorious community. Of course, I fail at being brief and writing drabbles, so. xD I thought when I wrote this idea it would be all Jade/André shipping, but... things mutated. And basically I wanted a holiday-themed something, haha. Enjoy, I hope!

* * *

"No, you have to open your fingers more—"

"My hands are only so big, Jesus Christ—"

"I didn't say mutate the size of your hands, I said _open your fingers—_"

"They're _open!_"

"Not open _enough!_"

"Fuck this," Jade announced. She swung herself off the piano bench, boots clicking on the stage as she began walking away. "I'm going to find a normal teacher."

"The only other person who can decently play the piano is Sikowitz!" André called after her.

Jade spun back around. "So maybe we should just take a break."

"Break sounds good."

They resumed their side-by-side position on the bench. Jade was inspecting the keys as though they might hold some kind of poison; André was wondering exactly how he got suckered into this. "Okay," he said after a moment of silence. "Like, just, put your hands like this." He mimed the move and waited for Jade to copy it. She rolled her eyes as she did so. "No, farther apart. Do we have to talk about the fingers again?"

"Do we have to talk about you ordering me around again?"

He flung his arms up. "You asked me to teach you!"

"I _told _you to teach me," Jade corrected, sounding utterly bored. "Hurry up with the decent instruction, dude."

There was something to be said, André mused, for crimes of passion. "Why am I even doing this?" he demanded, taking Jade's fingers and positioning them on the correct keys himself. "You can't just drag a guy outta study hall and forcibly wrangle a piano lesson out of him! This is not in the spirit of Christmas!"

Jade snorted delicately. "Yeah, _I_ have spirit."

He sighed, and then pressed down on her knuckles so that a clear note rang through the auditorium. For a second so brief André almost missed it, her face brightened. "Show me again," she ordered. Obligingly, because that was how you did things with Jade West, he shaped her fingers and hands until they were formed over the next note, and the next, and the next.

"Hey," André said, a grin splitting his face before he could help it. "You totally just played a song."

Jade's face was skeptical. "Uh-huh."

"Like, a suckish, short song, but a song." He almost tried for a high-five before remembering that she frightened him. "Way to go."

"You sound like a camp counselor, shut up."

"But seriously," he said, suddenly curious again. He stilled her hands. "What's this for?"

She struggled to start playing. "Get off."

"See, there's this thing where I'm stronger than you and don't have to." Christ, was it legal for one chick to glare so hard? She should be fined. "So can I get an explanation?"

Jade scowled, then sighed. They sat in silence for several long seconds before her fingers went limp under his palm. "So, yeah, I don't know if you noticed, but Beck has, like, a fetish for me being _thoughtful_."

"That's… uh, nice…"

"Also, his parents are being dicks," she continued succinctly, "and going away for Christmas. Which actually means we get the house to ourselves, which means I'm getting laid in a bunch of new places—"

"Jade, aw, don't _say_—" Dude. _Dude. _Did he _really _need that all up in his head?

"Prude." Jade rolled her eyes. It seemed to be her hobby, along with talking blatantly and unashamedly about her sex life. How fun for the rest of the world. "So, like, come on. Who wants to get laid by someone who's all mopey and depressed?" She made a face. "Ew, tears in my twat. No thanks."

André closed his eyes. "I am contemplating psychotherapy, here."

"So if I'm all thoughtful and play him some shit I went and learned, he won't be all annoyingly depressed," Jade finished. "…And that means I get sex," she added, but it was enough of a tacked on afterthought to make André ninety-six percent sure that her first sentence was the original point of the last hour.

He shook his head. "You know what, Snow White? You're actually kind of a sap."

"Fa-la-la-la-la," Jade said dryly. She threw his bag at him. "Oh yeah, and you're driving me home. So step on it, Mister Piano Man."

André sighed, buttoning his jacket. Beck had _better _appreciate this.

…Like, without a lot of explanation and details about why he appreciated it. Yeah, a manly shoulder pat would probably suffice.


End file.
